Welcome to Boxwood Cottage!

So glad that you found me! My blog is about everything I love like gardening, decorating my home & garden and crafting. Although I'm from Germany I write my blog in English so that hopefully every visitor can read it. Hope you'll stay a while and will leave me a comment so that I know that you were here! xoxo Carola

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Hello dear bloging friends and readers, before I'm off to my vacation in Italy :) I'd like to say good bye to my summer garden and share with you some new creations and a fab prize that I won!

The picture above I forgot to show you in my last post. I attended a paper making class at my sisters art studio at the beginning of August and this is the result. 9 different sheets of selfmade paper. It was so much fun to exercise with the paper pulp. My cousin Stefanie was there with me as well and we both decided that we have to do it again very soon!

Last weekend I played with water colors, chalk, ink, acrylic paints, stamps and all sorts of papers and embellishments and out came the collage above (it's just a part of the collage, which is to big to scan in one part). Then I scanned it in parts and printed it out and embellished it more and scanned it again and then printed it out again in different sizes and then cutted it in shapes for my pendant glasses and the outcome was a new line of collaged pendants

which is still in the works. I didn't really know how much fun it is to actually use a self made collage for my pendants instead of using found papers and just do some cut outs and pastings. This felt so much more like real art and was very satisfying. I haven't got around to solder them yet with all the preparations for our vacation, but I'll do that as soon as I'm back home.

A sweet parcel arrived at my door step this week from Sandra Evertson. I was so lucky to win a prize from the 1 year blogging anniversary of her inspirational art blog http://sandraevertson.blogspot.com/. It's the cute little porcelain doll head in the photo below. He was all bold and I just had to embellish him a bit for his first photo shoot so I made him a party hat and gave him a paper lace collar and stuck him on a round cloth pin and put him in an embellished glass bottle. He came in that cute little box with a darling Edwardian lady card.

Thank you very much Sandra for sending him over the big ocean to Boxwood Cottage where he is appreciated a lot!

Click on the photo to enlarge it!

Now it's time for me to say good bye to my summer garden. I guess when I'm back home in two weeks time nothing will look the same.

These pictures are from the shady part of my back yard under my trees and between the hedges. This is the best place to spend hot summer days at, because of the shade the trees provide.

These Hydrangeas, Nicotianas and Lobelias are growing in a pot on my hot patio/deck.

The Monardas and some Alchemillas are growing again after beeing cut back before.

The bumblebees are always enjoing my Verbena bonariensis, which has meanwhile selfseeded everywhere in my garden, after I first planted it two years ago.

Eden rose 85 aka Pierre de Ronsard is providing me with new buds all summer long and is still blooming beautifully:

On my deck I always have a parasol open because otherwise some flowers would dry out and die in no time:

Well now it's really time to say good bye and good night! Don't forget that you can enlarge all my photos to see more details. I hope to see y'all again mid September when I return from my journey to Venice, Tuscany and Rome.

Until then I wish you a wonderful late summer time!

Carola xox

P.S.:

A word to my nice blogging friends giving me blog awards again lately. I appreciate it a lot. I just don't like to post them on my blog. Same with the tag games, it all takes so much time, that I prefer to spend in a creative way, at least as long as I still have my full time office job. I hope you understand and don't feel ignored. It's so sweet that you think of me and it makes me very happy that you like my lil blog!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Welcome back to the home, garden and studio of Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers! Today I can share with you some new crafts, amazing parcels that I got in the mail with new supplies and treasures and some new garden photos at the end of this post.

After I had so much fun creating my "Vintage wallpaper wallboxes" from empty cereal boxes like the one in the first picture of this post, I thought about something that I can do with my empty "Café Latte" card board boxes and so the idea of a "Vintage wallpaper desk box" was born. I embellished the ugly cardboard box from all possible sides and now it sits on my desk holding scissors and brushes, as you can see in the photos above and below. I had fun using some of my new supplies for this little project, of which I can show you more photos later in this post.

Click pictures to enlarge and see all the details!

I also worked on some new soldered pendants this month:

I made a whole collection of Toile de Jouy and Marie Antoinette inspired pendants, of which you can see more pictures on my flickr page.

Lately I love using German scraps with glass glitter for my pendants too, like on this sweet Victorian girl:

The double Marie Antoinette pendant in the next two pictures was a custom made order for Dorthe from Denmark:

I also had some beautiful parcels in the mail in the last two weeks, one of these parcels came from my sweet friend Madai over at Wren Cottage and was jam-packed with the most wonderful goodies :D

Madai spoilt me with lot's of lovely papers, scraps and stickers and divine smelling tea dyed papers as well as a gorgeous vintage rose tin box and other lovely bits and bobs.

I love it all so much!

She also was so kind to make me a silver glitter "Boxwood Cottage" garland which I think came out simply fabulous and that I hung on my mantle, doesn't it look fab there? Madai is currently working on new glitter garlands to stock up her enchanting etsy shop Wren Cottage!

As always please click pictures to enlarge and see more details! Btw, the 3 beautiful soft colored and with french lavender filled hearts that are also hanging on my mantle piece are all handmade by my friend Anita over at My Country Cottage Garden and she just has a wonderful new collection of summer hearts for sale on her blog and I know for a fact that she is already working on more gorgeous rose hearts so if you like them too, head over and see if you can get one here: http://ein-stueck-garten.blogspot.com/!

Above you'll see a postcard of Madai's enchanting table setting at Wren Cottage which I put in a vintage wire frog that Madai also sent me, knowing that I was looking for them out here for month and not finding any. Thank's again for all the treasures you sent me and especially for your friendship dear Madai! :) xox

In the picture above I show you my new sweet Vintage Baby doll head that I ordered from Cerri Campbell's gorgeous Little pink studio shop along with all the lovely velvet posies and soft pink lace borders. Cerri is always stocking up on new and vintage treasures to decorate your home and studio or to craft and make art with, so I can only suggest you to have a look in her shop if you haven't been there yet http://www.thelittlepinkstudio.com/ ! Your baby is having a good home here dear Cerri don't worry!

I have already used some velvet posies and pink lace on my "Vintage wallpaper desk box" that I showed you at the beginning of this post as well as pieces of the beautiful Vintage wallpaper in the next photo, that I got send from dear Donna Layton over at Under the red roof blog last friday. I so love the collection of papers you chose for me Donna, thanks a million!!! You can get your own Vintage wallpaper packs in Donna's etsy shop in case you don't know. Donna owns an amazing collection of the most gorgeous Vintage wallpapers and I'm so very happy that I also got sheets of the flocked wallpaper now for the first time! :))

And lastly I like to share some August garden pictures with all the garden lovers among you.

This wonderful scenting rose is blooming for the first time this season. It's David Austin's St. Cecilia:

I also love the look and scent of Phlox in my summer garden:

My sweet multi colored "Augusta Luise" is having her second flush of blooms now:

and on my patio I have the English rose Wrenlock rose blooming along with Zinnias and Cosmos in matching shades of pink and not so matching a soft yellow Hollyhock in the background growing directly in front of my living room window:

One of my faves at the moment is this delicate and feathery Thalictrum sin. delavii below:

Thank you very much dear readers for staying with me until the end of this long post that you hopefully enjoyed.

About Me

I started blogging in September 2005 first only about my garden and home/interior decorations, then I discovered the world of art & craft blogs and was so captivated that I had to get involved. I learned a lot of Mixed Media and Altered Art Techniques and to master the art of soldering which opened a whole new and fascinating world to me. Meanwhile Boxwood Cottage is simply about everything I love, especially all things crafty as well as flea marketing & antiquing, interior design with old & vintage objects and gardening of course oh and not to forget I love friendship swaps. Since 2011 I'm vegan and quite passionate about it, but that has the potential to fill a whole other blog, for which I don't have the time right now and there are already so many vegan blogs to find in the www. If you like to contact me just email me to
Carolinchen39athotmaildotcom